My "new" 72 Javelin SST

Tony, if you find a guy who can touch up your truck and trailer, he's the guy I want to use. 

The original steering wheel needs a repaint, and it's the skinny rimmed base wheel from 1972.  I really don't care for it.  

I remembered that a 3-spoke sport wheel had come in a bunch of spares when I bought my '69 AMX, but it was in bad shape, and even worse after I left it outside for a year or so.  The hub was rusted and the rim had cracks in it. The spokes were in good shape though, so I soaked it in Evaporust for a day, after first ensuring that Evaporust wouldn't hurt the aluminum spokes. It didn't, and the way it removed the rust was pretty amazing.  I didn't take before and after photos of the hub, but you can get an idea of what the rim was like from this photo.

I thought about getting a leather wrap on it, but that looked like $250-350 proposition, so I decided to see if I could do anything to fix it myself first.  I figured I had nothing to lose, and could always wrap it later if I screwed it up.

I've had pretty good luck in the past repairing the dash pad on my AMX with this stuff called Padded Dash Filler from a company called Urethane Supply. It's a two-part talc-based filler that stays fairly flexible, so I thought it might work on the rubber rim to fill in the cracks.

To blend the repaired areas with the original, I decided to spray the rim with a spray rubber coating called "Leak Seal" made by Rustoleum.  This is similar to the "as seen on TV" stuff that they spray on a boat with a screen door bottom. It's used to patch rain gutters, etc. and it's thick enough to mask minor imperfections in the rim.  I chose the Rustoleum brand because it claims to be paintable.

The results weren't bad.  I found by standing a foot or two away with the spray can I got a nice textured finish that looks sort of like suede.

  

I then covered that with about three coats of SEM Color Coat vinyl spray paint.  Considering what I started with, I'm happy with the results. Not show car quality, but it makes a nice impression for a driver.  It's pliable, seems durable enough, but time will tell.  Leather wrap is still an option if it doesn't hold up, though I'd probably do better to just to find a nice used wheel if I have to.

Back from Kenosha and have been painting the interior pieces I picked up there and in Gettysburg.  Here's a before and after of the driver's door panel.  I sure think it looks better without the P.O.'s upholstery job on the lower half of the door.

The color is SEM 15173 (Camel), which is very close to the original peanut butter color.  It's just a tad lighter, but when I compared the cost of using the off-the-shelf color with a custom mix I decided it wasn't worth the extra expense.  

Finished both door panels today, but the rear seat panels are upholstered the same way, so they'll have to go as well.  I'm itching to get started on the dash though, so the rear seat panels will have to wait.

Got the horn button painted on the steering wheel too. Not too bad for what I thought was a junk steering wheel.